Mission type orders answers the why. Marines and other great organizations like Apple inspire with the why not the what or how

Organizational Spirituality is alive and well with Michael and Son

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Michael and Son owner Basim Mansour and get to know a little more about the company and the leader who leads this great company. In an industry suffering from volatility in consumer spending trends, construction subcontracting of electrical trade work , material cost volatility in copper or other manufactured residential products, shortage of credit, equity and capital among homeowners, many trade contractors have not figured out how to stay in business, let alone grow. Mansour's company has grown from $250k in annual sales in 1990 to close to $100 million and 400 trucks in multiple cities from Philadelphia to Raleigh, NC without outside funding.  In the last four years, Mansour has grown the company by almost 100% during one of the worst economic conditions ever faced.  In less than 23 years Mansour has attributed the company’s success to staying customer focused and team oriented.  Mansour was forced to drop out of college with 6 credits of formal college education under his belt before he left college to support his family and run his father's business in 1990 after his father passed away suddenly leaving him to support his mother and younger sister.

Mansour was taught a strong work ethic and technical skills by his father, but the business growth has been all his determination, effort and force of will.  He uses the analogy of pushing a sled in football practice to being an entrepreneur and forcing success.  He means to tell entrepreneurs that they have to put everything they have into their business endeavor to make a business succeed.  Really digging your toes in and pushing with everything you've got to be successful.   He was 19 and his family had just lost their primary bread winner in a family business.  His family was left with little money.  They had to borrow money just to bury his father.  He has lived through the hardships facing utility cut offs and struggling to make ends meet.    He however was no stranger to hard work and survival.  His breakthrough came when he was so stressed and frustrated with a pounding head from the pressure of trying to make ends meet that he said to himself, "So What! What can anyone really do to me now?" He likens the self-realization to death row inmates who have certainty of their fate and embrace acceptance.  He bootstrapped this business from that position with a contract from Pulte Homes to provide services to a new home subdivision going up and leveraged that starting cash flow to continue growing.  He instilled teamwork at the core of the business philosophy and remaining focused on servicing and pleasing the customer with a passion.  His story is not typical of most trade contractors you might meet, but is often the formula of the great entrepreneurs.

Where Mansour is unique from other small business owners is that he cites no proprietary formula, genius or patents that are the secret to success.   No formal business school training.  No government grants or hand-outs.  No outside consultants.  No outside angel investors or venture capital funding to get his business off the ground.  He cites plain old hard work and teamwork.  He formed an advisory team of subject matter experts on everything from electrical, mechanical and plumbing to make up his core advisory team to help him evaluate products and services.  They developed a team sales approach and brought in a sales training expert to educate his technicians on creating a balance between sales, service, educating the customer, and cross-selling add on services through traditional marketing.  The simplest form of marketing:  slapping a label on all the appliances they can service when in the home was a tried and proven strategy that works for many trades contractors, but the difference for Michael & Son was an in house state of the art call center and enterprise system handling the call volume and dispatching service and access to the owner for every customer or employee.   This approach, along with tight cost controls, instilling disciplined values of teamwork to every employee has created a unique service organization.   Even master electricians with years of experience hired into the company spend weeks in training to learn Michael and Son systems to include HVAC or plumbing capabilities to explain other areas of the company's offering and capabilities before they step foot in front of a customer to install a generator or complete another electrical repair.  The same goes for those who answer phones and talk to a customer with a problem.

The company remains more than relevant with state of the art technology like tablets that technicians carry to educate customers with product videos.  Customers sign and pay for orders with a mobile commerce solution tied to their enterprise system tracking key performance metrics that tie behaviors to incentive pay for employees resulting in 20% to 30% higher pay for employees.  In an industry which is highly fragmented with over 80% made up by independents and just 20% concentrated in giant international conglomerates who focus primarily on government and commercial services in the electrical trade space (like large national giant MC Dean).  Michael and Son focuses on residential consumers, and have achieved a leading geographic presence in the markets they serve and are on their way to becoming a national organization (again without any outside funding or Wall Street investors).   The company now offers franchising opportunities and partnerships to experienced trade professionals to offer them a great work environment and company to work for and offer support.   The company has demonstrated the basics of building a business making the transition to becoming a great organization.  A state of the art training program for all employees, a fundamental belief in customer service with basic tenets of competent technicians who arrive on time, in clean logo'd uniforms, driving immaculately clean vans (seen as rolling billboards), labels that are slapped on every appliance they can service from the hot water heater, to the electrical load center and central air conditioner and furnace are the foundational  business techniques that have delivered their outstanding results.   

 

The company also promotes their “Helping Hands” program where the company’s and Mansour’s charitable work is highlighted on local broadcast channel infomercials along with the Youtube video series (as featured in this post) that provides an audience with the opportunity to share and profile their charitable projects while also promoting the company's capabilities.   I was genuinely impressed with the company's owner and the employees I met including the young technician who came to service my Sears Central Air Conditioner last summer and all the good hearted people working for Michael and Son Services on the phones.  I would highly recommend buying from Michael and Son over their competition like Sears Home Central, Lowes, Home Depot, United Air Temp, or an independent operator (unless I knew the local independent operator personally or he came highly recommended by someone else I knew personally).   To learn more about Michael and Son Services, Inc. capabilities, visit www.michaelandson.com or call 703-658-3998. 

 

Narcissistic, broke, and 6 other ways to describe the Millennial generation

Narcissistic, broke, and 6 other ways to describe the Millennial generation

Interesting article about why millenials need leadership in their lives more than ever.  Article in The Week makes the following points about millenials (those born in the 80s and 90s):

1. They're spendthrifts
2. Broke
3. Socialists
4. Narcissists
5. Political
6. Less religious
7. Stressed
8. And what else?  ENTREPRENEURS!

If you're under 25 and starting a business, don't forget basic leadership traits, or better yet, hire a Marine to teach you about leadership traits and values like exercising good and sound judgment in making your business decisions, so you're not broke before you reach age 30.  Or better yet order a copy of How To Compete With The Industry Giants The Field Manual To An Entrepreneurial Society.

Leadership in the Economy Means CFOs Have To Balance Risk Goals Better Than Ever

This article is reposted from CFO Magazine, and I thought you should all see it and understand why it is taking longer than expected for the economy to recover, for unemployment to fall, and for company's financial growth to return to a steady and healthy financial pace.  It all comes down to confidence and how well companies feel about taking risks.  CEOs are on CFOs to come up with ways to "think outside of the box", while CFOs are seeking ways to manage risks.  The below article in CFO Magazine helps frame the discussion:

Private-Company CFOs Have Cash But Won’t Use It
Private-company CFOs surveyed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants said they have enough cash or have even increased their cash this year, but they remain reluctant to deploy...
Published: Thursday
http://bit.ly/LcjbwW

Private-company CFOs surveyed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants said they have enough cash or have even increased their cash this year, but they remain reluctant to deploy it.

Forty-three percent of the 1,250 senior executives in an AICPA Business and Industry Outlook Survey released today have “about the right amount” of cash currently, while 36% said cash assets have increased from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2012. Thirty-six percent also said they specifically had more noncyclical cash and liquid assets, up from 31% in last year’s second quarter. Almost half of those surveyed were CFOs who were also CPAs (the next-most-prevalent title was controller, at 22%), and 69% represented privately owned firms.

But 24% of the total respondent base said they were hesitant to deploy their excess cash, an increase from 20% who felt that way last quarter. Only 12% said they would actually use it.

The reluctance to spend cash stems from an overall negative take on the economy. The AICPA’s CPA Outlook Index dropped two points, to 67 from 69, from this year’s first quarter to the second. Similarly, expectations for revenue, profit, and employment growth slid this quarter, though they were essentially unchanged from last year.

But not all is doom and gloom, according to Jim Morrison, CFO of plastics compounding firm Teknor Apex and chair of the AICPA’s Business Industry Executive Committee. He does not consider the two-point drop that dire, considering the index has dropped 9 to 10 points in some years.

“We might have been in a holding pattern for a while, but we are going to resume growth,” Morrison says. “It may not happen right away. There’s still optimism that over the next year, we will be on a growth pattern rather than a downward spiral.”

Morrison is also optimistic about the growth prospects for his firm, which provides plastic compounds to manufacturers in the automotive and retail markets, but he is a bit more cautious regarding the economy. “Our own organization is able to grow in this environment . . . but we are unsure about how the overall economy is going to go.”

The AICPA’s findings back up that sentiment. More than 60% of senior-level CPAs in the survey said they expect their own companies to expand in the next 12 months, a result that’s unchanged from the first quarter.

In the Midwest, the most optimistic region, 59% of the respondents looked more favorably on the economy than they did in the first quarter, which compares with 54% of respondents from the West, 52% from the Northeast, and 51% from the South. The manufacturing and automobile sectors have driven most of that growth in the Midwest, Morrison says.

Those companies that are the most poised for growth, though, tend to be smaller in size. Among companies with revenues between $100 million and $1 billion, 66% said they expected to expand. That compares with 62% of respondents with revenues of more than $1 billion, down from 65% last quarter. The drop in the larger firms’ expectations marks the first time since 2010 that the largest companies were not the most likely group to have growth on their mind.

Respondents also showed a slight improvement in their ability to obtain the necessary financing to expand. While more than half viewed credit availability to be about the same, only 10% saw it as a barrier to a stronger liquidity position, down from 13% last quarter.

“The banks are just getting their act together in terms of where they feel comfortable lending. Their sweet spots are probably in that midlevel company size,” says Morrison. “It’s not surprising that the liquidity side is improving a little bit every quarter.”

For information on solid profitable investment opportunities for your organization or company, endorsed by public and private enterprise and part of the growing initiatives in meeting renewable portfolio standards in many states, contact Raj Dwivedi at 410-992-2646 or at 301-892-0207 for information on some really innovative ideas to help your company's economic situation.

Two Lists You Should Look at Every Morning - Peter...

Solar Energy Choices: Two Lists You Should Look at Every Morning - Peter...: Two Lists You Should Look at Every Morning - Peter Bregman - Harvard Business Review

Coursera and OCW.MIT.EDU opens possibilities for everyone!

Check out Parallel Switchgear Field Engineer Job - MD

For all you electrical guys with military experience including those from the 2500 MOS field, take a look at: Parallel Switchgear Field Engineer Job - MD